During this time of economic recovery, many young Canadians are seeking to improve their chances at developing meaningful careers by opting to invest in higher education. But with federal funding of colleges and universities having been slashed almost continuously since the early 80s, students are expected to make up this shortfall by paying unreasonable tuition […]

In his contribution to the debate on the rights and wrongs of violent resistance to oppression, David Bromwich tells us that non-violent action is supposed to be “visible and exemplary.” In the case of Palestine, this chimes with the dominant Western narrative that the Palestinians would have achieved liberation long ago if only they had avoided mindless […]

 Do we as a community have the right to know if there is a dangerous or violent offender in our midst? I would like to believe that most of us would respond with a resounding yes. Yet, what if that same offender was a youth? Aaahh… now the answer is not so easy, is it? […]

Getting back to the free software series, let’s take a look at Open Office (www.openoffice.org). Called OOo for OpenOffice.org, Open Office is a full-featured office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet package, presentation software and a database. To get all of those applications in a version of Microsoft Office, you would have to look at […]

  B.C. Southern Interior MP, Alex Atamanenko is extremely disappointed that the Conservative budget bill C-9 was adopted in the House of Commons on June 8th. “This bill paves the way for the privatization of Canada Post and authorizes the sale of the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. with no debate or public scrutiny.  It […]

Wow! What a pleasant surprise. There, as CTV Vancouver’s local news top story tonight (Tuesday), was a hidden-camera investigation into B.C.’s program to prevent voluntarily self-restricted problem gamblers from entering casinos.  The system failed … repeatedly … as a supposedly “listed” problem gambler entered three Vancouver-area casinos, gambled, and cashed in his proceeds without a single security […]

I’m going to stray, this week, from my “free software” series to talk about Facebook. It’s great to stay in touch with old friends, and there are some really entertaining games … but Facebook has its dark side, too. Two issues have put the Facebook in the news lately. The first is privacy. There has […]

As parents, we may not be willing to believe that our babies are having sex, but they are. Whether we accept this fact or not, the hard reality is this: Teenagers are going to have sex! And for many of them it will be sooner than later, this is why sex education in the schools […]

There comes a time for every parent when they realize they’ll soon need to have “the talk” with their child (ren). I don’t know what made me think I was exempt, except maybe that I blocked the idea to avoid the sheer horror of it – they say your mind can just delete certain memories, […]

We’ve all heard the saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Usually that is excellent advice, but there are a few exceptions. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to look at some of these exceptions within the world of computers. Before I get into specific examples, there are a […]